Cloud tabs

ABSTRACT

The presently disclosed techniques related to data transfer and synchronization between multiple electronic devices. The multiple electronic devices may be logged onto a user&#39;s account with a cloud computing service so that they may transfer data relating to websites that they have accessed to the cloud computing service so that such data may be synchronized amongst the multiple electronic devices. A tab screen on each electronic device may allow a user to view the other linked devices as well as the websites that they have accessed so that the user may select such websites if so desired.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is related to U.S. application Ser. No.61/595,114, filed on Feb. 5, 2012, the subject matter of which is herebyincorporated by reference in its entirely for all purposes.

BACKGROUND

The present disclosure relates generally to electronic devices andcloud. computing, and more particularly, to techniques for synchronizingelectronic devices using cloud computing.

This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects ofart that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure,which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed tobe helpful in providing the reader with background information tofacilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the presentdisclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statementsare to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.

In today's fast-paced society, it is very common for people to useseveral electronic devices to “stay connected” with their variousresponsibilities. For example, those that spend time at home or at theoffice often use a desktop or laptop computer to monitor e-mail, staycurrent on social websites, browse the Internet, and perform in variousother tasks. However, such electronic devices are not particularlyconvenient when called away from the home or office, particularly for arelatively short amounts of time, such as lunch, business meetings,soccer practice, etc. During these periods, people often rely uponpocket-sized handheld devices, such as cellular smart phones, to stayconnected. Additionally, people often turn to larger handheld devices,such as tablet computers, to stay connected when circumstances permit,since such devices strike a good balance between portability and alarger, easier to use format.

Although each of the aforementioned devices typically possess Internetcapability, through the use of WiFi and/or cellular networks, suchdevices are typically used independently of one another. As a result,the data on one device is not synchronized with the data on any of theother devices unless the user purposely chooses to synchronize onedevice with another, typically by connecting the devices together andperforming a specific synchronization routine. Because suchsynchronization routines require user action and are relatively timeconsuming, most users typically synchronize their devices relativelyinfrequently. Moreover, such synchronization routines only synchronizedata between devices at the time the devices are connected, so anysubsequent use of the devices is again performed independently in anunsynchronized manner.

The use of cloud computing services can facilitate the synchronizationof data between a user's multiple devices. The term “cloud” is oftenused a generic reference to the Internet based upon cloud drawings thatare used to represent the internet in computer network diagrams as anabstraction of the underlying infrastructure that it represents. Morerecently, however, the term cloud has been used in conjunction withcomputing services that may be provided over the Internet at a cost tocustomers. For example, presently, at least Apple, Amazon, Microsoft,Google, and Dropbox offer cloud computing services that host data overthe Internet. Generally, users of these cloud computing services maystore media and other data on the Internet so that they can access itfrom any of their multiple electronic devices, as opposed to storingsuch information onto the memory of any of their particular electronicdevices. For example, a user may store music, photos, books, or videoson the cloud and access it from any of their multiple devices. Apple'siCloud®, for example, operates “invisibly” or automatically, so thatwhen a user takes a photograph using their iPhone®, it is automaticallysent to any other electronic devices linked to their iPhone throughiCloud®, such as their iMac® or iPad®. Similarly, if a user edits adocument in the Pages application on their iMac®, the same edit appearson the Pages application of their iPhone®.

However, despite the number of different cloud computing servicesavailable, none provide satisfactory synchronization of Internetbrowsing amongst multiple devices. Further, none provide any suchsynchronization techniques that may enhance a user's experience andfacilitate more efficient use of the various devices.

SUMMARY

A summary of certain embodiments disclosed herein is set forth below. Itshould be understood that these aspects are presented merely to providethe reader with a brief summary of these certain embodiments and thatthese aspects are not intended to limit the scope of this disclosure.Indeed, this disclosure may encompass a variety of aspects that may notbe set forth below.

The present disclosure relates to various techniques that may be used tosynchronize data among multiple electronic devices. For example, certaintechniques facilitate the synchronization of data used during websitebrowsing on multiple devices. These techniques may provide websiteinformation, such as URLs, between any linked devices, as well asidentify which device is associated with such website information. Thisinformation may be provided to the user in the form of a screen or adrop-down tab that may be accessed on each of the user's devices.Furthermore, such information may include information relating towhether the item in the tab was in “reader” mode, information relatingto magnification of the window that was opened in another device,backward and/or forward history, scroll position on the web page, andautocomplete information when entering an address into an address fieldon any of the linked devices.

Various refinements of the features noted above may be made in relationto various aspects of the present disclosure. Further features may alsobe incorporated in these various aspects as well. These refinements andadditional features may exist individually or in any combination. Forinstance, various features discussed below in relation to one or more ofthe illustrated embodiments may be incorporated into any of theabove-described aspects of the present disclosure alone or in anycombination. The brief summary presented above is intended only tofamiliarize the reader with certain aspects and contexts of embodimentsof the present disclosure without limitation to the claimed subjectmatter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Various aspects of this disclosure may be better understood upon readingthe following detailed description and upon reference to the drawings inwhich:

FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram of an electronic device that mayutilize the synchronization techniques disclosed herein, in accordancewith aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 2 illustrates a front view of a handheld device, such as an iPhone,representing another embodiment of the electronic device of FIG. 1, inaccordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 3 illustrates a front view of a tablet device, such as an iPad,representing a further embodiment of the electronic device of FIG. 1, inaccordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 4 illustrates a front view of a laptop computer, such as a MacBook,representing an embodiment of the electronic device of FIG. 1, inaccordance with au embodiment;

FIG. 5 illustrates a schematic view of multiple electronic deviceslinked together via a cloud computing service, in accordance with anembodiment;

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a bookmarks screen that provides accessto a cloud tabs screen for the hand-held devices illustrated in FIG. 3;

FIGS. 7A, 7B, and 7C illustrate and example of an initial screen or dropdown tab for a hand-held device, tablet device, and laptop computer,respectively, in accordance with an embodiment;

FIGS. 8A, 8B, and 8C illustrate examples of screens or drop-down tabsfor the handheld device, the tablet device, and laptop computer,respectively, that show the websites that have been accessed or openedon the other devices, in accordance with an embodiment;

FIGS. 9A and 9B illustrate an example of a screen or drop-down tab forthe handheld device and the tablet device, respectively, that showwebsites that have been accessed or opened by the other device when thetablet device is in a private browsing mode, in accordance with anembodiment;

FIGS. 10A and 10B illustrate two pages of a document that has beenopened on the tablet device when the tablet device is in reader mode,and FIG. 10C illustrates the second page of the document that has beenopened on the handheld device, in accordance with an embodiment; and

FIGS. 11A and 11B illustrate an example of screens of the handhelddevice and the table device showing a suggested auto completion of awebsite entry, in accordance with an embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

One or more specific embodiments of the present disclosure will bedescribed below. These described embodiments are only examples of thepresently disclosed techniques. Additionally, in an effort to provide aconcise description of these embodiments, all features of an actualimplementation may not be described in the specification. It should beappreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation,as in any engineering or design project, numerousimplementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve thedevelopers' specific goals, such as compliance with system-related andbusiness-related constraints may vary from one implementation toanother. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a developmenteffort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be aroutine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those ofordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.

When introducing elements of various embodiments of the presentdisclosure, the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” are intended to mean thatthere are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,”“including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean thatthere may be additional elements other than the listed elements.Additionally, it should be understood that references to “oneembodiment” or “an embodiment” of the present disclosure are noted to beinterpreted as excluding the existence of additional embodiments thatalso incorporate the recited features.

As will be discussed in detail below, the present disclosure relates tovarious techniques for transferring and synchronizing data amongstmultiple different electronic devices. In particularly, the techniquesrelate to the sharing and synchronization of website information amongstthe devices in a manner that is user friendly and convenient. Thedisclosure techniques allow a user to view and select websites that havebeen accessed by any of the devices. The techniques also allow a user toaccess a website in the same mode and/or same location as the website iscurrently being accessed or was previously being accessed by one of theother devices.

With the foregoing in mind, it is useful, to begin with a generaldescription of suitable electronic devices that may employ the variousdata transferring and synchronizing techniques described below. Inparticular, FIG. 1 is a block diagram depicting various components thatmay be present in an electronic device suitable for use with such adisplay. FIGS. 2, 3, and 4 respectively illustrate perspective and frontviews of suitable electronic devices, which may be, as illustrated, anotebook computer, a handheld electronic device, or a tablet computingdevice.

Turning first to FIG. 1, an electronic device 10 according to anembodiment of the present disclosure may include, among other things, adisplay 12, input/output (I/O) ports 14, input structures 16, one ormore processor(s) 18, memory 20, nonvolatile storage 22, an expansioncard 24, RF circuitry 26, and a power source 28. The various functionalblocks shown in FIG. 1 may include hardware elements (includingcircuitry), software elements (including computer code stored on acomputer-readable medium) or a combination of both hardware and softwareelements. It should be noted that FIG. 1 is merely one example of aparticular implementation and is intended to illustrate the types ofcomponents that may be present in the electronic device 10.

By way of example, the electronic device 10 may represent a blockdiagram of the notebook computer depicted in FIG. 2, the handheld devicedepicted in FIG. 3, the tablet computing device depicted in FIG. 4, orsimilar devices, such as desktop computers. It should be noted that theprocessor(s) 18 and/or other data processing circuitry may be generallyreferred to herein as “data processing circuitry.” This data processingcircuitry may be embodied wholly or in part as software, firmware,hardware, or any combination thereof. Furthermore, the data processingcircuitry may be a single contained processing module or may beincorporated wholly or partially within any of the other elements withinthe electronic device 10.

In the electronic device 10 of FIG. 1, the processor(s) 18 and/or otherdata processing circuitry may be operably coupled with the memory 20 andthe nonvolatile storage 22 to execute instructions. Such programs orinstructions executed by the processors) 18 may be stored in anysuitable article of manufacture that includes one or more tangible,computer-readable media at least collectively storing the instructionsor routines, such as the memory 20 and the nonvolatile storage 22. Thememory 20 and the nonvolatile storage 22 may include any suitablearticles of manufacture for storing data and executable instructions,such as random-access memory, read-only memory, rewritable flash memory,hard drives, and optical discs. Also, programs (e.g., an operatingsystem encoded on such a computer program product may also includeinstructions that may be executed by the processor(s) 18.

The display 12 may be a touch-screen liquid crystal display (LCD), forexample, which may enable users to interact with a user interface of theelectronic device 10. In some embodiments, the electronic display 12 maybe a MultiTouch™ display that can detect multiple touches at once.

The input structures 16 of the electronic device 10 may enable a user tointeract with the electronic device 10 (e.g., pressing a button toincrease or decrease a volume level). The I/O ports 14 may enableelectronic device 10 to interface with various other electronic devices,as may the expansion card 24 and/or the RF circuit 26. The expansioncard 24 and/or the RF circuitry 26 may include, for example, interfacesfor a personal area network (PAN), such as a Bluetooth network, for alocal area network (LAN), such as an 802.11x Wi-Fi network, and/or for awide area. network (WAN), such as a 3G or 4G cellular network. The powersource 28 of the electronic device 10 may be any suitable source ofpower, such as a rechargeable lithium polymer (Li-poly) battery and/oran alternating current (AC) power converter.

As mentioned above, the electronic device 10 may take the form of acomputer or other type of electronic device. Such computers may includecomputers that are generally portable (such as laptop, notebook, andtablet computers) as well as computers that are generally used in oneplace (such as conventional desktop computers, workstations and/orservers). FIG. 2 depicts a front view of a handheld device 10A, whichrepresents one embodiment of the electronic device 10. The handhelddevice 10A may represent, for example, a portable phone, a media player,a personal data organizer, a handheld game platform, or any combinationof such devices. By way of example, the handheld device 10A may be amodel of an iPod® or iPhone® available from Apple Inc. of Cupertino,Calif.

The handheld device 10A may include an enclosure 36 to protect interiorcomponents from physical damage and to shield them from electromagneticinterference. The enclosure 36 may surround the display 12, which maydisplay indicator icons 38. The indicator icons 38 may indicate, amongother things, a cellular signal strength, Bluetooth connection, and/orbattery life. The I/O ports 14 may open through the enclosure 36 and mayinclude, for example, a proprietary I/O port from Apple Inc. to connectto external devices.

User input structures 16, in combination with the display 12, may allowa user to control the handheld device 10A. For example, the inputstructures 16 may activate or deactivate the handheld device 10A,navigate a user interface to a home screen, navigate a user interface toa user-configurable application screen, activate a voice-recognitionfeature of the handheld device 10A, provide volume control, and togglebetween vibrate and ring modes. The electronic device 10 may also be atablet device 10B, as illustrated in FIG. 3. For example, the tabletdevice 10B may be a model of an iPad® available from Apple Inc.

In certain embodiments, the electronic device 10 may take the form of acomputer, such as a model of a MacBook®, MacBook® Pro, MacBook Air®,iMac®, Mac® mini, or Mac Pro® available from Apple Inc. By way ofexample, the electronic device 10, taking the form of a notebookcomputer 10C, is illustrated in FIG. 4 in accordance with one embodimentof the present disclosure. The depicted computer 10C may include ahousing 32, a display 12, I/O ports 14, and input structures 16. In oneembodiment, the input structures 16 (such as a keyboard and/or touchpad)may be used to interact with the computer 10C, such as to start,control, or operate a GUI or applications running on computer 10C. Forexample, a keyboard and/or touchpad may allow a user to navigate a userinterface or application interface displayed on the display 12.

Various types of electronic devices 10, such as the handheld device 10A,the tablet device 10B, and the laptop computer 10C, may be linkedtogether by a cloud computing service 40, as illustrated in FIG. 5. Thecloud computing service 40 may be any suitable cloud computing service,such as those offered by Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and DropBox.However, for the purposes of the remaining examples discussed herein,the handheld device 10A, the tablet device 10B, the laptop computer 10C,and the cloud computing service 40, will be presumed to be an iPhone®,an iPad®, a MacBook Pro®, and iCloud®, respectively, which are availablefrom Apple Inc. Although the synchronization and data transfertechniques will be discussed in the context of these Apple devices andservices, it should be readily understood by those of ordinary skill inthe art that similar synchronization and data transfer techniques may beemployed using other devices and cloud computing services.

To link the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C together, the devices aretypically registered under the same account for the cloud computingservice 40. To begin this process, the handheld device 10A, for example,may be configured to display a screen 50 that includes an item 52 forselecting information relating to the cloud computing service 40. Inthis example, since the handheld device 10A is an iPhone® and since thecloud computing service is iCloud®, the item 52 is entitled “iCloudTabs.” Prior to the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C being registered or loggedonto a common account or the cloud computing service 40, the selectionof a respective item 52A, 52B, or 52C for accessing information relatingto the cloud computing service 40 may cause an initial screen or tab54A, 54B, or 54C to be displayed on the respective device 10A, 10B, and10C. In this example, the initial screen or tab 54A, 54B, and 54Cdisplays a symbol of a cloud along with the statement “iCloud® autodeafly shows all the open tabs on your other devices” to explain whatfunction the item 52A, 52B, and 52C is will perform once the devices arelogged onto the user's iCloud® account.

Once a user has registered the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C with the user'siCloud® account, data may be transferred and synchronized between thedevices 10A, 10B, and 10C. Although various specific types of datatransfer and synchronization will be described below with respect to thevarious examples described with respect to the remaining figures, thedata transfer and synchronization using iCloud® as the cloud computingservice 40 may generally be accomplished using iCloud® document storageand/or iCloud® key value storage, as is understood by those of ordinaryskill in the art. Furthermore, data synchronization may take place asdescribed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/349,519, filed on Jan.12, 2012, and entitled “Data Synchronization,” which is herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.

As discussed above, a person may use several different types ofelectronic devices 10 during the course of a given day to “stayconnected” depending largely upon where the person is and what theperson is doing. In other words, if a person is at home or at theoffice, they may likely employ a less mobile electronic device, such asa desktop computer or laptop computer 10C, whereas if a person islounging in their backyard or waiting at a gate in an airport, they mayutilize a more portable device such as the tablet device 10B. Similarly,if someone is sitting in a meeting or running errands, they may likelychoose to stay connected using a more mobile device, such as thehandheld device 10A. Since users of any of these devices 10A, 10B, and10C often stay connected by doing various types of web browsing, itwould be useful and convenient if information relating to the webbrowsing performed on one device would be available on the user's otherdevices Should the user switch between devices during the course oftheir various activities.

One technique for providing a user with website information accessed onthe various devices 10A, 10B, and 10C is illustrated in FIGS. 8A, 8B,and 8C. In these examples, FIG. 8A illustrates a tab screen 56A on thehandheld device 10A, FIG. 8B illustrates a drop-down tab screen 56B onthe tablet device 10B, and FIG. 8C illustrates a drop-down tab screen56C on the laptop computer 10C. It should be noted that each of the tabscreens 56A, 56B, and 56C include an indication of what websites havebeen accessed or opened on the user's (e.g., “John Doe's”) other devices10A, 10B, and 10C, that are linked together via the cloud computingservice 40. For example, the tab screen 56A indicates that the user'slaptop computer 10C (e.g., John Doe's Mac®) has accessed the Applewebsite and the New York Times website, and further provides anindication that the user's tablet device 10B (e.g., John Doe's) hasaccessed the BBC website and the Fox News website. Similarly, FIG. 8Billustrates that the tab screen 56B of the tablet device 10B provides anindication that the user's laptop computer 10C (e.g., John Doe's Mac®)has accessed the Apple website and the New York Times website, andprovides a further indication that the user's handheld device 10A (e.g.,John Doe's iPhone®) has accessed the CNN website and the ESPN website.Finally, FIG. 8C illustrates that the tab screen 56C of the laptopcomputer 10C provides an indication that the user's handheld device(e.g., John Doe's iPhone®) has accessed the CNN website and the ESPNwebsite, and provides a further indication that the user's tablet device10B (e.g., John Doe's iPad®) has accessed the BBC website and the FoxNews website. Also, it should be appreciated that the user may haveaccessed the mobile version of the CNN website http://m.cnn.com on thehandheld device 10A, but the tab screen 56C of the laptop computer 10Cmay instead provide the full version of the CNN website(http://cnn.com), and vice versa, or both versions may be provided as anoption for the user. This type of data synchronization allows the userto select any of the illustrated websites that are provided under thetab screens 56A, 56B, and 56C so that the user can easily access any ofthe websites the user has recently visited on any of the various devices10A, 10B, and 10C in a user-friendly and convenient manner.

For the websites accessed on the laptop computer 10C, the data stored one server might take the following form:

  {   “24B19C75-EE8A-4EC9-B523-506BFE8303F4”=  {     DeviceName=”JohnDoe's Mac”;     LastModified =“2012-05-30 17:00:35+0000”;     Tabs=  (       {      Title=”Apple”;      URL=http://www.apple.com/;     }       {      Title=”The New York Times-Breaking News, World News &Multimedia”;      URL=http://www.nytimes.com/;     }    );   }; }

The first entry (the long string of digits, characters, and dashes) isan identifier that uniquely identifies the device. The data alsoincludes the URLs of the accessed websites. In other words, when thedata relating to the websites accessed on the laptop computer 10C isuploaded to the cloud computing service 40, the data may take the aboveform. Similar data may be uploaded to reflect the websites accessed onthe handheld device 10A and the tablet device 10B. Once the website datafrom the various devices 10A, 10B, and 10C has been uploaded to thecloud computing service 40, the data may be downloaded to the otherdevices so that all the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C are synchronized.

Of course, there may be circumstances where a user may desire not toupload certain data to the cloud computing service 40 and/or not toshare or synchronize such data amongst the various data devices 10A,10B, and 10C. One example of such s circumstance is illustrated in FIGS.9A and 9B, where a user is engaging in a private browsing session usingthe tablet device 10B. During a private browsing session, a user may notwant other users of their device or of their linked devices to be ableto access information or websites that they have accessed during theprivate browsing session. Hence, a private browsing session typicallyallows a user to browse websites without saving any information aboutwhich sites or pages have been visited. In accordance with the presenttechniques, when a user of the tablet 10B is engaged in a privatebrowsing session, other devices that are linked to the tablet computer10B via the cloud computing service 40, such as the handheld device 10A,will not be provided with information relating to websites that the userhas accessed using the tablet device 10B. For example, the tab screen60A of the linked handheld device 10A may continue to show the websitesaccessed on the user's laptop device 10C (e.g., John Doe's Mac®), butthe tab screen 60A does not provide any indication of which websites mayhave been accessed during the private browsing session on the tabletdevice 10B. In this example, the tab screen 60A does not list anyindication of the tablet device 10B nor the websites that have beenvisited during the private browsing session. However, the tab screen 60Acould continue to provide an indication that the handheld device 10A islinked to the tablet device 10B, but simply not provide any indicationof which websites have been visited using the tablet device 10B. Itshould also be noted that since the other linked devices 10A and 10C,(e.g., John Doe's iPhone® and Mac®) are not in private browsing mode,the tab screen 60B on the tablet device 10B continues to provide anindication of these devices along with the websites that have beenaccessed using these devices.

During a website browsing session, a user may prefer to view informationon the website in a “reader” mode. In the reader mode, the web browsertypically strips a webpage down to a newspaper-style text on a blankwhite page and retains only simple text formatting and inline images. Inthe reader mode, the web browser may also automatically append pagestogether so that a user may read the whole article without making anynavigational inputs. In the example illustrated in FIGS. 10A, 10B, and10C, the user of the tablet device 10B has selected the reader mode andis viewing an article. The first page of the article is shown in thescreen 62A and the second page of the article is shown in screen 62B.Hence, if the user is viewing the second page of the article when theuser decides to switch from the tablet device 10B to the handheld device10A, when the user accesses the website that the user had previouslybeen viewing using the tablet device 10B, not only does the selectedwebsite appear on the handheld device, but it appears in the same mode(e.g., form and/or location) as the user had left it on the tabletdevice 10B. The information on the handheld device 10A appears in readermode and the second page of the article is displayed. To accomplishthis, the tablet device 10B may upload data to the cloud computingservice 40, where the data may take the following form:

  {  “24B19C75-EE8A-4EC9-B523-506BFE8303F4”= {   Device Name=”John Doe'siPad”;   LastModified=”2012-05-30 17:00:35 +0000”;   Tabs=    (       {    IsShowingReader = 1;     ReaderScrollPosition =  {       pageIndex =2;       version = 1;     };     Title = “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the ArsTechnica review | Ars Technica”;     URL =“http:/arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/”;    }   );  }; }

As can be appreciated, this data identifies the device 10B (e.g., JohnDoe's iPad®, along with the URL website being visited, as well as anindication that the tablet 10B is in reader mode and located at pageindicator 2. It should also be appreciated that the data may includecurrent scroll position, magnification, form field contents, currentvideo or audio playback position, as well as forward and/or backwardhistory.

The data that is transferred to the cloud computing service 40 that maybe used to synchronize the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C may also includeinformation relating to the autocompletion of information that isentered into the address field of a web browser on the devices 10A, 10B,or 10C. As discussed with regard to the previous devices, the handheld10A had accessed the CNN website. Hence, as illustrated in FIG. 11A, ifa user starts to input the address to the CNN website in the addressfield 64A, an autocompletion screen 66A appears with the full websiteaddress that may be selected by the user. Since the data relating to thewebsites accessed by the handheld device 10A has been uploaded to thecloud computing service so that it may be shared with the other linkeddevices, such as the tablet device 10B and the laptop computer 10C, anautocompletion routine running on the devices 10B and 10C may use thisshared data as well as their individual data when providingautocompletion suggestions. Accordingly, in the example illustrated inFIG. 11B, when the user of the tablet device 10B begins to input theaddress of the CNN website in the address field 64B, the autocompletionscreen 66B provides the complete address of the CNN website which may beselected by the user.

In a typical cloud computing system, the cloud computing system “pushes”data to the various devices with which it is linked. However, dependingupon the frequency of this type of data transmission, the amount ofpower consumption may become problematic, especially for battery powereddevices. Hence, in the embodiments discussed herein, if the electronicdevice 10 is strictly an AC powered device, such as a desktop computer,it may operate in a manner in which is receives data periodicallytransmitted from the cloud computing service 40 and in which isperiodically transmits data to the cloud computing service 40.Furthermore, data may be transmitted to and/or from the cloud computingservice 40 when a new tab screen is opened, when an existing tab screenis closed, when a window containing multiple tab screens is closed, orwhen the user: navigates to a new website in an existing tab screen,selects a different tab screen in a window, enters or exits reader mode,scrolls through a webpage or pages through an article, makes an existingwindow active that was behind another window, reorders a tab within awindow, enters information into a form field, and/or pauses playback ofa video or audio track. Indeed, even battery-powered electronic devices10 may operate in this manner during periods in which they areAC-powered.

However, when battery-powered electronic devices 10, such as thehandheld device 10A, the tablet device 10B, and the laptop computer 10C,are operating in a battery-powered mode, they may selectively “pull”data from the cloud computing service 40 in order to save power. Forexample, such devices may pull data from the cloud computing service 40in response to a web browser on the device being opened and/or inresponse to the user opening a tab screen. Depending upon the powersaving requirements of the battery-powered electronic device, they maynot pull any further data from the cloud computing service 40 untilanother web browsing session has begun or until another tab screen isopened. Alternatively, once the initial data pull has occurred, thedevice may periodically pull data from the cloud computing service 40thereafter until the web browser is closed and/or until the tab screenis closed. Similarly, a battery-powered electronic device 10 may onlypush its data to the cloud computing service 40 upon the selection of anew website or when its web browser is closed.

The specific embodiments described above have been shown by way ofexample, and it should be understood that these embodiments may besusceptible to various modifications and alternative forms. It should befurther understood that the claims are not intended to be limited to theparticular forms disclosed, but rather to cover all modifications,equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope ofthis disclosure.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of synchronizing data on a plurality ofelectronic devices, the method comprising: using a cloud computingservice to: receive data relating to websites accessed by each of theplurality of electronic devices; and transmit the data to eachrespective electronic device from the other of the plurality ofelectronic devices so that each respective electronic device obtainsdata relating to the websites accessed by the other of the plurality ofelectronic devices.